


The Clouds Above Will Hold You

by VeteranKlaus



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Unrequited Love, eruri - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-03 23:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17886839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: On Tuesday afternoon after training Levi locks his door and coughs up petals of marigold.





	The Clouds Above Will Hold You

He’s training with his squad when he feels it; a little itch in his throat, tightness in his lungs. It feels like when you’ve breathed in a load of dust or powder and it’s gotten stuck there. He thinks, for a moment, that maybe Mikasa’s kick to his ribs did more than he thought, or the amount of dust the cadets are kicking up in their pathetic scuffles is caught in his lungs. Either way, he shrugs it off, coughs into the palm of his hand and tells Armin to keep his hands up.

 

Erwin comes out to check on them. His blonde hair’s messy from his own training, Levi presumes, and his jacket’s thrown over his arms. It’s a hot day and the sun unrelentingly blisters down on them. Levi’s sure he could drown in the amount of sweat coming from the hormonal teenagers around them.

The Commander is in good spirits today and he smiles down at Levi. “How are they?” He asks, jerks his head slightly towards the cadets, all still brawling one another on the ground and trying to get the upper hand on their partner.

“Not bad,” he says, folds his arms across his aching, itching chest. “Shit at their flips, though.”

They turn their eyes to the cadets. Mikasa’s offering a hand to Eren, covered in dust and dirt, shirt clinging to his shoulder blades with sweat.

“I guess you better be teaching them well, then,” he says, jokingly, and he clapps a hand on Levi’s shoulder. “After dinner we’re having a meeting for the upcoming outing,” he said, “I’ll see you there.”

Levi nods and clears his throat. Mikasa looks at him oddly but she doesn’t say anything other than to volunteer herself for a demonstration.

 

By the end of training, he’s almost blue in the face from holding the coughs in. He dismisses the cadets with a wave, telling them to shower and get dinner, and he excuses himself quickly.

Power-walking through the home of the Survey Corps and glaring death at anyone in his way, taking in ragged breaths and choking on coughs, he makes it to his bedroom in record time and slams the door shut behind him in time to fall onto his desk because he can’t breathe.

It felt like he’d pierced a lung, like blood was flooding in and up his throat only it was solid and it _hurt_. He presses a hand to his chest, wondering if he seriously needs to go get help, when something falls past his lips. Perfectly yellow and gold falls past his lips like a gold rain and pooled in the palm of his hand, speckled with drops of red.

He stares at the marigold petals in his hand. Erwin’s favourite, blooming in his lungs.

Levi crushes the petals in his fist and throws them out the window.

 

“You’ve been looking a bit under the weather, Levi. Are you feeling alright?”

He brings his tired gaze from the floor in front of him to look at the blonde across from him. The teacup in his hands is burning and he blows across its’ steaming surface gently.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He retorts, and Erwin raises an eyebrow at him. The morning light filtering in through the window to their side highlights the side of his face, his high cheekbones and morning stubble. Levi stifles a cough.

“Just that,” he says with a shrug. “If you’re not one-hundred-percent then I need to know.”

Levi rolls his eyes but he does appreciate the concern. “I’m sorry your damn garden produces an absurd amount of pollen,” he snorts, and sees Erwin’s lips twitch slightly.

“But it sure brightens the place up,” he points out, “and the cadets like it.”

“I didn’t know you were so fond of the cadets.”

Erwin tips his head to the side and offers a light smile. “They’re not horrible some times.”

Levi snorts. “You don’t train them,” he muttered sarcastically. He swallows hot tea down and looks away.

“Seriously, Levi,” Erwin says. He puts his tea aside with a gentle clink and leans forwards, clasping his hands together on his knees. “I need to know if you’re unwell.”

“Stop fussing so much, idiot. I’m fine.”

 

 

Levi does research on it as soon as he can. He finds a few pages in a health book tucked in the corner of the HQ library, and he rereads all of it over and over and over again.

Hanahaki disease. It occurs in someone in a severe or prolonged case of unrequited love. Flowers, often times the favourite of their unrequited lover, bloom in the victims lungs, bursting from the interior lining of the lungs and growing into stems and, eventually, full flowers. Eventually, if untreated, they overcrowd and fill the lungs, slowly and painfully suffocating the victim. It only has three endings, and only one looks pleasant to Levi.

One ends with the victim’s love being returned, in which the flowers die and shrivel and are coughed out and don’t return. Another, very simple ending, was simply to let them grow. They would grow and fill the lungs slowly, cause breathing problems and damage the throat each time they were coughed up. Eventually, the victim would die from suffocation. The third, possibly even worse ending, was a risky operation to remove the flowers and stems from the lungs, but with it cutting out all emotion towards that person and refraining it from growing back.

There’d been a few cases in Sina over the years, medical records stored away undoubtedly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see them.

Levi shoves the book in one of the drawers in his office and forgets about it. It doesn’t matter.

 

 

The outing they’d been planning approaches quicker than he realised. His training had lacked recently, lungs unable to keep up with his usual harsh training schedules. One day he stands on the thick branch of a tree, leaning against its trunk, and sees spots as he tries to breathe around a mouthful of bloody petals.

 

 

Outside the walls, the cadets sleep in sleeping bags on the floor of their base and Levi sits on the roof, watching for any titans just in case. Travelling all day had made him short of breath and he could virtually feel the flowers in his lungs, feel them getting larger and larger each hour. He’d take whatever breaks he could when he had to, coughing up petals and wheezing air through his damaged throat.

He thinks back to the book in his office drawer. It hadn’t said how long it lasted, but it had only been two weeks since his first cough of marigold.

Erwin catches him in the early morning before they rouse the cadets.

“Lovely morning,” he comments, and Levi tips his head in agreement.

“Hey,” Erwin utters, fingers scraping golden petals on the roof. “Marigold,” he says, thoughtfully.

Levi glances down at them and feels the ache in his throat. “Must have come with the wind,” he shrugged. The petals fall from Erwin’s fingers and the man turns his face towards the rising sun, washing him in golden light. Here, his eyes shone like the endless oceans cadets fantasized about, the water that pulled him down, down, down, that fertilized the poison in his lungs.

“I didn’t think they grew out here. I’m no florist, but I’d say they’re probably my favourite.”

“I know,” Levi states, “you only grow about twelve hundred in the gardens.”

Erwin smiles, turns his face forwards to the sun.

“They’re beautiful flowers. They’re like the sun grew out from the ground. I read somewhere they’re supposed to stand for pain and grief, however. Isn’t that oddly fitting?”

Levi holds back his snort because of course they do. Of course something so beautiful, held in such regard by his Erwin, would symbolise such a thing so perfectly.

“I think they fit together perfectly,” Levi says. When Erwin turns to look at him he turns away to glare at the sun with what he can only hope isn’t a completely miserable expression. The golden glow from it almost matches that of the deadly flower petals still stray on the roof between Erwin and himself, and when he sees it bathing the place around him in a heavenly glow, he sees death. His death.

He wonders, briefly, if he’ll make it back to the walls. He has no idea how much time he’s got left now, how long this usually takes. He thinks about that operation again. Is he selfish enough to die when he could be needed in the future? Is he selfish enough to think Erwin could ever feel the same?

Levi’s hand curls into a fist and he coughs into it. Erwin watches on with a grim, secluded expression.

“That cough sounds like it’s getting worse,” he comments once Levi stops.

“It’s just a cough. It’ll be gone in a couple of days,” Levi tells him. He swallows down copper drops torn from his forest throat.

Erwin eyes him for a moment and Levi begs him to turn away. He’s selfish, and he wants to see the reflection of beautiful death in his murderous eyes, see golden lights from heaven highlight his cheekbones and his tousled hair, burn the image into his mind.

He doesn’t, though, and Levi accepts the challenge in his eyes instead.

“I do wonder what goes on in your mind, Levi,” he says, turning away. Levi’s lips quirk.

“I’m sure you don’t really want to know that,” he says, and Erwin smiles. His eyes squint and the lines at the corners of his eyes grow deeper.

He laughs. “You’re probably right, actually. Still.” He glances back at him, shrugs. “I’d like to imagine that I’ll understand you one day.”

Levi presses his lips together, tilts his head to the side and hums thoughtfully. “Maybe one day. But I think you already understand what you need to.”

He looks thoughtful at that. Pensive. His hand reaches up to scratch his jaw.

“If you say so,” he says. He heaves himself to his feet, then, with a grunt.

“We’ll be heading out again soon. Get ready.”

He offers him a hand and Levi takes it, tries to ignore the closeness. His lungs ache and he sees stars for a moment, and then Erwin’s grabbing around his waist and holding him above the taunting ground.

“Levi,” he hisses, and oh how he wants to just let go. Let Erwin hold him afloat or let him fertilize the garden of his favourite flowers growing in his lungs, let Erwin do whatever he wants. He can’t feel his legs and he grabs a fistful of Erwin’s Survey Corps jacket, hauls himself up, and pushes him away.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, blinking a few times and pushing down coughs. “I’m sorry –“

“If you’re ill, Levi, you need to tell me,” Erwin urges. His voice drops quieter and he still has an arm around his back, grabbing his shirt. His breath warms the shell of his ear and his eyes bore down into him.

Levi presses his lips together. “I’m not ill, Erwin,” he says. He’s not ill, not at all. He’s simply dying. Levi wants to close his eyes, to only know and feel Erwin, to know nothing but the hand on his back, the mint on his breath and the command in his voice. But he meets his gaze with his own unwavering one, rolls his eyes. “I forgot to eat and lost track of time. I’ll get something when we go in, I’m sorry.”

Erwin glances him up and down, watches his hands, steady by his side, and he lets go off Levi slowly.

“I trust you,” he says, and that hurts more than it should. Levi nods and follows his Commander inside.

 

 

They complete their outing with nothing more than Connie’s sprained ankle and windswept marigold petals. Erwin keeps an eye on Levi and they return back to the walls with Hange chatting about Eren’s progress as titans. Levi skips the after-mission meeting they usually have to lock himself in his bathroom as he dribbles gold and red with his cheek on the tiled floor, gasping for air.

 

 

The operation, he thinks desperately. He doesn’t have to die. He can have all this sorted if he just got up and went to the hospital, threatened some poor doctor into doing the surgery immediately, and he’d be fine. He could say that he was ill and after a couple of days in the hospital he could threaten the same doctor and sneak out. He could continue as if nothing ever happened.

Then he thinks about Erwin’s eyes glowing in the sunlight and his laugh. He thinks about when they come back after a long, successful expedition and he, Hange and himself would hide out in one of their offices’ with some whiskey and Hange would insist on telling stories and Erwin, with whiskey in his stomach and a flush on his cheeks, would laugh and look so goddamn relaxed for once in his life. Sometimes he could even coax a glass or two of whiskey into Levi, if he smiled enough.

Does he want those moments torn away from him?

Levi decides he’s selfish. He’s goddamn selfish and he wants these moments to himself.

He sweeps up petals from his bathroom floor with shaking hands and flushes them down the toilet.

 

He prolongs his strength as long as he can. He trains like usual until he physically can’t continue. He can’t eat because his throat hurts and flower stems have torn it up on their way out. He both longs to spend time around Erwin and also wants to avoid him until the day he dies. He savours and curses each moment with the blonde. It leaves him breathless, quite literally, but he sears each moment into his mind.

He evades the questions and the concern, says he’s been smoking or some shit and gets on with life being hostile to any worry sent his way. Even the fucking cadets ask him if he’s alright.

 

He knows it’s coming. He can feel flowers in his throat, and even breathing through his nose is hard. He wakes up from his short sleeps because he can’t breathe, and the skin on his throat and on his cheeks wears thin. He thinks that, surely, every inch of his body must be a forest now. When he breathes in he can feel petals move with the breeze, can feel them in between each rib. Ivy must coat his bones and once he's dead lillies will sprout from his eyes and his teeth will become tulip petals, his tongue a beautiful mess of blue statice. His spine will erupt in Queen Anne's Lace and his veins will bloom asters instead of blood. 

He sits up at night on the Thursday and watches the stars outside his window. Everything’s quiet except for his breathing, the way his nails tap against the wood he’s sitting on, and he wonders if in another life this could have ended differently. If, in another life, this never would have happened.

His lungs burn and he coughs. He doubles over and hacks, presses his hands to his aching chest and claws at his thin skin. A perfect, whole flower drizzled in red falls past his lips, trails his blood down his chin, and more comes. When he breathes in it goes nowhere, flower petals like a deadly cobweb catching his air, and the effort of staying upright is suddenly too much as his ears ring. 

Levi’s cheek hits the floor and he alternates between wheezing and hyperventilating pathetically to coughing and choking. He needs air to cough but a large, perfect flower blocks his throat, makes him gag and tear it out of his mouth. Usually, it stops by now. He coughs out a couple of flowers and then he can breathe again, but not now. He’s left it too long to do anything. He wants to see him one last time, he thinks, and he leaves a trail of blood and marigold behind him, petals dripping from his lips, gold stained with red falling from his nose, and pressure builds behind his eyes as he hauls himself towards his door.

Erwin’s room is only two doors down. If he gets to his feet, he can make it. He can stagger and stumble down the hallway and burst in through the door, look at his confused face as he rouses from his sleep, undoubtedly on his desk over paperwork, and then he can die.

Levi’s arms give out and his cheek is hot on the wooden floor. He moans around a whole marigold flower in his throat, lodged in there and unmoving, and he looks at the door within arm’s reach of him.

He thinks, at least, Erwin will find it pretty. They’re his favourite flower, after all.


End file.
